Paris suffers another horrifying terrorist attack

By PARIS

Read more:
What Paris’s night of horror means for Europe
A mood of “defiant normality” in Paris, the day after the horror

UPDATE Nov 14th 1230 GMT: The French government put the death toll at 128.

UPDATE 0200 GMT: SCREAMING sirens, queues of ambulances and police brandishing weapons filled the streets and boulevards of the 11th arrondissement in central Paris on the evening of November 13th as news spread that several co-ordinated terrorist attacks had unfolded that evening in the city. Roads were sealed off by armed police; 1,500 soldiers were drafted in to help secure the city; France’s borders were closed after an emergency cabinet meeting chaired by the president, François Hollande. He had been extracted from the national football stadium, where France had been playing an international friendly game against Germany. Two suicide attackers reportedly struck the stadium, setting off three explosions . Hollande spoke at 2am Paris time, saying he would lead a “ruthless” fight against terrorism.

By then at least 140 people had been reported killed. The worst slaughter came at the Bataclan concert hall when attackers burst into a rock concert there. A few minutes before that attack began, attackers had fired into crowds in an area packed with bars and restaurants nearby. Victims spoke of seeing “piles of bodies” in the bars and on the streets outside. Other attacks, unconfirmed at the time of writing but perhaps numbering four more, were reported at other locations in the centre of the city.

The scale of the attacks exceeds even the horror of the murders of journalists working for Charlie Hebdo, and subsequent killings in January this year. It is far more reminiscent, given the numbers of victims and the sophistication of the attacks, of the terrorist assault on Mumbai, in India, in 2008 in which 164 people died; or of the 67 killings during a four-day siege at the Westgate shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013.

It seems possible that the attackers, who co-ordinated the timing of their assaults closely and chose targets far apart to spread confusion, had those spectacular assaults in mind. In Mumbai assailants had attacked a railway station, cafés and luxury hotels—soft targets with large numbers of people present--taking hostages and prolonging the killing as long as possible, to ensure sustained and intense media attention. Similarly with the Westgate attack, by prolonging the killings, the assailants helped to spread a sense of helplessness.

The immediate reaction of many in Paris was to say that a big terrorist attack such as this had long been expected. Talk of possible assaults in Paris with Kalashnikov rifles have been aired in the French press recently. Islamic State had threatened to strike France, in particular Paris, for its involvement in the conflict in Syria, and because of earlier French intervention in Libya.

At least one other recent attempted attack was foiled, in August, as a gunman attempted to kill passengers on a high-speed train travelling from Brussels to Paris. He failed only because his weapons jammed and heroic passengers overwhelmed him.

It is a reminder that, despite the grisly scale of this attack, others could follow. Indeed, French authorities were taking no chances that the latest carnage in Paris was yet over. The city authorities announced that all public places would be closed from November 14th: all schools, museums, libraries, gyms, swimming pools, public markets and more.

UPDATE 0030 GMT: The hostage situation at the Bataclan theatre has ended after police stormed the building and killed two or three gunmen. Reports put the number of dead in the building at around 100.

PARIS, 2315 GMT: TEN months after Paris was rocked by the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, the French capital has been struck again. This evening, in what appeared to be three separate incidents, at least 40 people, and possibly dozens more, were reported to have been killed. The majority were shot dead after gunmen opened fire in a busy district near the Place de la République. Others died in three explosions, apparently carried out by suicide bombers, at the Stade de France, the national football stadium. A separate hostage-taking incident was under way at the Bataclan theatre in eastern Paris, not far from the former offices of Charlie Hebdo. Amid ghastly bloody scenes and utter confusion, the death toll seemed to be rising alarmingly fast.

President François Hollande, who was watching the friendly football match between France and Germany at the stadium, was evacuated before the game ended. He joined the prime minister, Manuel Valls, for an emergency meeting in central Paris, after which he declared a state of emergency and announced the closure of France's borders. Government sources have been warning for some weeks now that another terrorist attack was imminent. Paris has been on its highest alert; and border controls were reinstated on November 13th amid worries about security at the Paris climate talks, which begin at the end of the month.

With the hostage situation unresolved, it will take some time to understand exactly what has taken place in Paris tonight. But everything points to a coordinated terror attack of unprecedented scale and operational nature. Reports suggested that the hostage-taking at the theatre, at which it was reported by French media that dozens were being held, could have been orchestrated by the gunmen responsible for the earlier shooting nearby.

France has been painfully aware of its particular vulnerability to terrorist attacks. It has been a leading ally for America in bombing attacks against Islamic State (IS) over Syria and Iraq, and recently sent its aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to the Persian gulf to reinforce its air-strike capacity there. It is regularly cited in propaganda videos broadcast by IS. And it has supplied in absolute numbers more jihadist recruits to fight in Syria and Iraq than any other European country, including Britain.

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, France conjured up an unusually powerful spirit of defiance, partly because the attack appeared to be such a symbolic blow to freedom of expression. Politicians from both left and right came together, alongside world leaders, to stand up to terror and for free speech. But even then it proved hard to sustain the political unity. This time, and just weeks before world leaders are due to arrive in the French capital for the climate summit, it will be harder still to reassure a shaken and horrified country.